Below, we caught up with the comedian about Practical People Win, what it’s like parenting as a comedian with a nontraditional schedule, and her best traveling tips. Read on.
Glamour: Can you walk through your creative process? Where do you find inspiration?
Zarna Garg: A lot comes from what’s going on in my life at the moment. Like my two older kids—I have a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old—there’s a lot of dating drama happening in their lives. The boyfriend said this, and the girlfriend said that. Something will stick in my head, and then it becomes, Oh, this is a funny idea. I’ll run with it and try to write something around it.
In this hour, I wanted to speak to what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be Indian in America. The word immigrant has become so loaded and heated in these last few years, and I wanted to bring some levity to it. Everybody’s angry on all sides. You’re Republican, you’re Democrat, you’re not even political, and you have very strong feelings. I wanted to bring some humor to the idea of being an immigrant and what we experience on the other side, watching the Americans. I also shared a little bit about what it means to be Indian, like how we cope when everybody around us is angry.
So that was the north star, and then the real-life stories kind of kept presenting themselves. Of course, my mother-in-law is a forever presence in my life. She’s always doing or saying something that will trigger me. Then it sits in my memory. Now, instead of worrying about it and crying about it, I’m like, That’s a joke.
Do you keep notes or anything to remember these moments?
I don’t take notes, because I’m on a stage almost every night. I’m doing an open mic or a show or a spot on somebody else’s show every night. So when something happens, I’ll try something that same day. I live very in the moment. If it happened, say, this afternoon, then tonight I’ll stop by a club and do 10 minutes and just talk about it in the funniest way. I’ll work it out, and I’ll see. It probably won’t get the biggest laughs the first time I try it, but I can usually tell whether the premise is resonating with the audience or not. If it did, then I’ll dig deeper and write it down and build it into something. Some premises don’t catch. I’m all about entertaining my audience. It’s not about what I am entertained by. I’ll give you an example: I’ve been trying to write a father-in-law joke for years. It just doesn’t land. Nobody cares.
It’s like you said in the special—you come at comedy as a business, so if people aren’t laughing, you move on to what they want.
Yeah, I don’t want to change people’s minds. I’m not a political comic. I’m not here to prove to somebody that I’m an artist at this level or that level. That’s not my idea of what I do. I’m here to serve my audience. They’re giving me a very important asset, which is their time, and I take every second, every minute seriously, almost to the point of insanity. My kids will be like, “Mom, it’s okay if it’s not a laugh line.” And I’ll say, “No, no, no. That line’s got to go.” I’m very, very deliberate about it.
